Tuesday, March 21, 2006

I saw King Kong last night. The new one. At least, I could have sworn I did. I spent the first couple of hours of the day thinking "shit, that was one scary film". Then I had some coffee and worked out that it must have been a dream, since I don't recall going to the pictures. But it really was as if I saw an entire movie, and it was Peter Jackson's King Kong. Only, I was in it. I was the lead role. And the story was way different from the original b&w version, which I have always loved. In my version, Kong was a real bastard. He was a bad gorilla, chasing me all over the place (sort of a fictional city encompassing aspects of many places I have lived over the years, as usual), turning over cars, ripping off roofs (rooves? Ah, I hate English sometimes), and just being a big black bastard. (Can I say that? Come on, we're talking about a large animal with black fur, OK?) And to make matters worse, he knew. I don't know what he knew, but I knew that he knew it. And it was about me. He knew my weaknesses. And somehow that was worse than the threat of getting crushed and eaten by him. But I did OK for most of the film, and managed to keep ahead of him. Right at the end, though, when I was walking around in some sort of indoor municipal swimming pool that had no water in it, he appeared behind me, and I knew I was cornered. That's where the film ended.

Has anyone here seen the Peter Jackson movie? Does it go something like that?

This is clearly an anxiety dream, perhaps caused by the fact that when you're asleep your big hair is flattened. Your subconscious creates a Banks monster (Kong/Banks, so similar they're practically the same word), causing you to wake up with a start, thereby maintaining the integrity of your awake-state height advantage. Of course, it might not be your hair that makes the difference. Maybe sleep makes you shrink. Which is worrying. Especially if you were to fall asleep for a hundred years or something. You'd be tiny when you woke up.

That's alarming, Ray. I didn't realise Sleep Shrinkage was quite so widespread. Luckily it wasn't around when Kafka wrote Metamorphosis. Imagine if Gregor Samsa had slept for a month -- he'd have woken up as a tiny insect, which would have been a very different story.

Fascinating stuff. So does it mean that we actually grow when we're awake? Presumably if you have a balanced sleeping/waking pattern you would stay the same height. Or you could just cut back on sleep if you want to be taller. For me and Ray this is not an issue. But for people like John, Russel, and even you, Al, it could be life-changing.

Kong didn't sleep for the first six months of his life and look what happened to him. Russel and John definitely sleep too much. They actually sleep sometimes when they're awake. In my case, though, I caught a rare desease when I was about twenty, which prevents me from growing or shrinking. Just my luck to be a freak.